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October 21st , 2024 Len’s Political Note #679 Flipping Republican seats in the House
2024 General Election
Play offense.
According to my calculations, (made. out of necessity, before the September 30 financial information is public because my wife and I are away), I anticipate 214 Democratic seats, 204 Republican seats, and 17 toss ups.
After a further review of the Toss ups, I revised my numbers: 215 Democratic seats, 206 Republican seats, and 14 Toss ups
Below are the toss ups with Republican incumbents who Democrats could flip. They are organized so that, with additional resources, the most likely to flip from Republican to Democrat is the seat listed as #1
Five seats to get us past the minimum needed for a majority of 218 – from the west coast to the east coast and back with a stop in Iowa on the way.
California 41. Will Rollins is running for a second time against the Incumbent Ken Calvert, who was first elected in 1992. California 41 is a mostly east-west district with Calvert’s home town of Corona in the west and the town that Will Rollins moved to at the district’s eastern end, Palm Springs. The district is 44% white, 38% Hispanic and has a median household income of just under $100,000.
Calvert has been a conservative Republican. He was the author of the E-verify system intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from working. As chair of the Water resources and power subcommittee, he led the effort to reauthorize the Water Supply, Reliability, and Environmental Improvement Act which preserved the collaboration among 25 state and federal agencies in a way that improves California’s water supply.
One of the crucial differences between Ken Calvert and Will Rollins has to do with attitudes toward sex. Calvert applauded the overturn of Roe v. Wade; opposed gays serving in the army; voted against the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act; and voted against the Equality Act which would have protected gays from being evicted by landlords for their sexual preference. Feeling some pressure because of changes in the Congressional District and Will Rollins’ candidacy, Calvert voted in 2022 in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act which included provisions protecting same sex marriage.
Will Rollins and his partner are a gay couple who moved not long ago to Palm Springs. Will Rollins lost the 2022 race to Ken Calvert by about 11,000 votes. Rollins is from south of Los Angeles, went to Dartmouth and got his JD from Columbia. After two clerkships and a stint working for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rollins became an Assistant US Attorney. Initially he worked on white collar crime. Subsequently, he focused on crimes associated with national security. In his campaign website, he reports that he “prosecuted an electrical engineer for conspiring to send microchips with missile guidance applications to China, Iranian nationals for violating U.S. sanctions on Tehran, a reported QAnon follower for an attack at the Port of Los Angeles, and some of the insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6th.”
That law and order portfolio is helpful for him in California 41. He is angry at those who damage US Security and is particularly angry at Donald Trump for his shenanigans with top secret documents. He is also particularly disturbed by Ken Calvert’s animus against gays. He notes Calvert’s initial Congressional win and says “Voters will see through Ken Calvert’s B.S. You look at how his career began when he outed his congressional opponent in the 1990s, Mark Takano. That’s how he decided to run. He ran on homophobia.”
Will Rollins has other issues. He supports women’s right to an abortion. He is critical of Calvert’s willingness to decertify the 2020 election as well as his opposition to the Infrastructure Act which has a project in the district. Will Rollins can win this election. One poll had him ahead by 6 points. Through June 30 he had outraised Calvert $7 million to $5.8 million. On June 30, Rollins had $4.7 million to spend to Calvert’s $3.6 million. Pile it on. Keep Will Rollins in the lead. DONATE. See Len’s Political Note #588
Iowa 03. Lanon Baccam would be the first Laotian American to serve in Congress if he is elected. His family was part of a minority in Laos. They were members of the Tai Dam community that spoke a language that resembles Thai.
Before redistricting, Iowa’s four congressional district divided the state almost precisely into four quarter. Post redistricting, Iowa 03 no longer slips easily into the state’s southwest corner. It does stretch along the southern border with Missouri, but does not quite reach the western border with Nebraska. Like each of the districts, Iowa 03 includes a city – in this case the capital, Des Moines,.
In 2022, Zach Nunn, a military guy, defeated the incumbent Cindy Axne by a little more than 2,000 votes. She had made her career in the backrooms of Iowa’s capital and was uninterested in running again in 2024. Instead, Lanon Baccam is running. Like many southeast Asians after the Vietnam war, his family found a home in Iowa. Lanon Baccam grew up in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, went to Mount Pleasant High School with thoughts of becoming a scientist. He felt a debt to the country that saved his family from a Communist regime and joined the army to fight in Afghanistan. His work was dangerous. He and his team of combat engineers collected and destroyed unexploded devices. They make movies about people who do that work.
Lanon Baccam came home, stayed in the national guard, and went to Drake University. He volunteered in the Obama campaign and then went to work in the Agriculture Department. Smart and efficient and a little foreign by Agriculture Department standards, he rose to be Deputy Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services. Years later, in the Biden administration, he became the Secretary’s Director of Scheduling and Advance and then Deputy Chief of Staff.
Lanon Baccam announced his candidacy promising to be a problem solver. He was welcomed by a former Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, Iowa Democratic royalty: “Lanon is a public servant in the truest sense of the word.”
And Zach Nunn? What kind of public servant has he been? He was a cerebral member of the Air Force. After Drake, he got a degree from a military school in Military Art and Science and another degree from Cambridge in international relations and security studies. A colonel in the National Guard, he served on Senator Chuck Grassley’s staff after serving on the staff of British House of Commons Member, Sir Peter Bottomley. A bipartisan military guy, he was director of cybersecurity for the NSC during the Obama administration.
Home, he served in the state legislature before running for congress where he opposed abortions without exception and then backtracked, where he opposed the Infrastructure law because it had too much waste, where he ridiculed the Capitol police for “allowing a bunch of middle Americans [to] overwhelm our Capitol.” He had become less bipartisan, less cerebral, too.
Lanon Baccam can win this election. There were two polls of the district in September. Both polls found Lanon Baccam ahead – one by 3 points, the other by 4. He was behind in the money race, though. By June 30, he had raised $2.7 million to Nunn’s $4 million. On June 30, he had $1.5 million to Nunn’s $2.7 million. Catch Lanon Baccam up. DONATE. Give him the chance he deserves to win. See Len’s Political Note #609
New York 04. Laura Gillen was a daughter of a Xerox regional executive, a local who tried the exotic and then came home. After a BA from Georgetown, she went to Broadway and the Stella Adler Studio, but was not destined to be an actress. She became an agent, working for the Greater Talent Network and got herself hired creating sets – the Royal Tenenbaums on Broadway, Angels in America on television. She never got past the fringes of the entertainment industry. Next, she went to sea to help people find themselves. Working for DiveinDeep, she took people on scuba dives in Thailand. She moved on to Kolkata and volunteered in India for the Mothers of Charity and Mother Theresa’s home for the dying.
Laura Gillen came home for a more conventional life. She went to NYU to get a law degree; practiced law in the City and on Long Island working on employment law and trade secrets. Working as a mediator and an arbitrator, she got involved Hempstead politics.
You may have never heard of the town of Hempstead, the largest town in the country. If Hempstead were a city, it would be the nation’s 17th largest, just behind San Francisco. Instead of a mayor, it has a supervisor. She was elected supervisor in this overwhelmingly Republican town. During her single term in that role, she had successes where she did not need the town council’s approval – putting contracts out to bid, undertaking audits, taking care with the budget to avoid a deficit, obtaining grants to restore a water testing laboratory, expanding the town’s shellfish hatchery, building a playground.
In 2022, she ran for Congress in the much more Democratic New York 04, but lost to former New York City police detective Anthony D’Esposito. It was a year that was terrible for Democratic congressional candidates in New York. In the way that Jared Golden in Maine or Mary Peltola in Alaska are surprising Democrats in Republican districts, Anthony D’Esposito was a surprising Republican in a Democratic district.
At the end of September, the New York Times reported on a story that will make it harder for D’Esposito to be reelected. His hiring in his district office was an embarrassment and raised ethical questions. He had hired his fiancee’s daughter and he had hired a girlfriend to work in the office. They probably did not run into each other because it appeared as if neither was in the office much.
Well before that story, an August poll had her ahead by 3 points. Laura Gillen was raising about as much money as D’Esposito. Through June 30, she had raised $3.2 million to his $3.4 million. On June 30, she had $2.5 million to his $2.2 million. Close this case. DONATE to Laura Gillen. Elect her to Congress and flip this seat. See Len’s Political Note #586.
New York 19. Attorney Josh Riley is running against first term Congressman and former county executive Marc Molinaro. Josh Riley grew up in Endicott in New York’s southern tier of counties. Once a busy factory town, Endicott lost its shoe industry and its IBM plant. Josh Riley went away to William and Mary and then to Harvard for law school. Hired by Boies, Shiller’s Miami office, he practiced a kind of political law representing, for instance, the American Academy for Pediatrics as they attempted to get low-income children access to medical care. He went to work for Al Franken in his early days as a US Senator. And Franken has been one of his biggest champions. Josh Riley returned to private practice, prospered, and then returned home. Or close to home. He lives in Ithica, which is in NY 19.
In 2022, Josh Riley ran for Congress and lost by about 4,500 votes. He is confident that in 2024, after watching the mess that Republicans have made of Congress, the voters of NY 19 will elect him to represent them. A September poll found him leading by three points. He placed the blame on the near congressional shut down on Molinaro, writing when the possibility of a shut down was imminent:
“Marc Molinaro is working with the far-right Freedom Caucus to restrict abortion access, slash funding for public schools, and take food off the tables of Upstate New York seniors. Now, he’s willing to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his way.
If Marc Molinaro wants to keep the taxpayer-funded paycheck he’s relied on his entire life, then he should do his damn job.
For as long as the government is shut down, I’m calling on Marc Molinaro to donate his paycheck to Meals on Wheels, one of the many organizations serving our community that will be hurt by his failure to keep the government open.”
Molinaro is not a hopeless character in this drama. He was a sufficiently successful county executive so that, in 2018, he was the Republican nominee for governor. But he is losing the financial race to Josh Riley. Through June 30, Josh Riley had raised $5.3 million to Molinaro’s $3.6 million. On June 30 Riley had $4 million to Molinaro’s $2.4 million
Complete the deal. This is a year when, so long as the pressure continues, New York Democrats will win Congressional seats they should win. DONATE. Help make Josh Riley one of those winners. See Len’s Political Note #580
Oregon 05. Janelle Bynum was an engineer. She got a Boeing scholarship and went to Florida A & M during a period when that historically Black university made a concerted effort to attract Merit scholars and other scholarship winners. She went to work for GM, but contemplated her future when, on 9/11, she was far from home on business in Taiwan.
She and her husband changed course. They went to work for his mother who was getting ready to retire from running her chain of McDonald’s franchises. Janelle Bynum and her husband figured out how to manage the business. He took care of the mechanical systems, made sure that the hamburgers were cooking. Janelle Bynum took care of everything else – from hiring to finance to purchasing.
They had a happy arrangement in Happy Valley, Oregon. The local schools changed her life. Janelle Bynum was appointed to the school district’s equity committee and took that role more seriously than the district expected. She called them on the inequitable treatment of Black kids. She recalled the opportunities she had when she was growing up in DC. working in the national zoo with flying squirrels and iguanas.
To improve schooling in Happy Valley and in Oregon Janelle Bynum ran for State Rep, defeating the mayor of Happy Valley Loren Chavez-DeRemer. She won again against the same opponent in 2016. Janelle Bynum felt successful as a legislator. She refers to successes in public safety, police accountability, increased funding for mental health, and protection against discrimination based on hair style.
Janelle Bynum is running for Congress against a familiar opponent. Loren Chavez-DeRemer was elected to Congress in 2022. Janelle Bynum has some reason to be confident. In September, a Democratic funded poll had her ahead by 3 points. In late August, a neutrally funded poll had her ahead by 2. She is not doing as well in the financial race. Through June 30, Janelle Bynum raised $2.4 million to Chavez DeRemer’s $4 million. On June 30 Bynum had $1.1 million to DeRemer’s $2.4 million.
Janelle Bynum needs resources to win this election. DONATE. See Len’s Political Note #618
Five more wins would truly establish a Democratic majority. These wins would be a little tougher. But they are similar to the first batch – from the west coast to the east coast and back, with a stop in Arizona and Iowa.
Arizona 06. Kirsten Engel is hanging in there. A September poll found her even with the Republican incumbent. A poll in August actually had her ahead by 4 points.
Kirsten Engel took a while to settle down. Her undergraduate degree is from Brown, her law degree is from Northwestern. She did a federal court clerkship in North Dakota then moved to Washington DC to work for the Environmental Protection Agency and then for the Sierra Club’s Legal Defense Fund. After Washington, she returned to the northeast to work as an assistant to Massachusetts’ Attorney General.
Finally, Kirsten Engel moved to the University of Arizona Law School where she settled. She never fully settled in as an academic, though she has a named chair and is a nationally recognized expert in climate law. She was elected to the state House of Representatives and to the State Senate. She ran for Congress in 2022 and lost by about 5,000 votes to Juan Ciscomani, a senior aide to Governor Doug Ducey on border issues.
Kirsten Engel is back for another shot at this. There are no recent polls. She is holding her own in the financial race. By June 30 she had raised $4.4 million, about the same as Ciscomani. On June 30, she had available $3.2 million to Ciscomani’s $2.7 million. DONATE. You could be the difference between her winning and losing this race. See Len’s Political Note #558.
California 13. Adam Gray lost the second closest losing Democratic race in 2022. The difference was 564 votes. A September poll had him leading by a point – demonstrating only that the race could be excruciatingly close again in this district south of Stockton, well north of Bakersfield. Its big town as Merced, with about 68,000 people.
Adam Gray was born and grew up in Merced, went to high school there and to Merced College before going off to the University of California at Santa Barbara. His family owned a dairy supply business. From his earliest days, he was more interested in politics than dairy supplies. After he finished his degree, he went to work for a variety of state legislators. Eventually, he testified against one of them who was arrested after a bribery investigation. By the time he testified, Adam Gray had been elected to the state assembly and had earned a reputation for bringing resources back to the district.
Asked why 2024 should be different from 2022, Adam Gray explained that turnout is greater in presidential years, that Democrats have a registration edge, and he is working on increasing turn out. His opponent, incumbent John Duarte, is from an agricultural family of Portuguese descent. Their farm grew almonds, pistachios and grapes and got in trouble with the federal government for damaging wetlands when they attempted to add wheat to their crops. They paid a million dollar fine.
Duarte has worked at being a moderate Republican representative. He opposed extreme positions on abortion, on LGBTQ rights, on confederate statues, and especially on immigration – arguing that E-Verify is devastating to farmers. We are better off if we can have a Democrat representing CA 13. Adam Gray is a little behind in the financial race. By June 30, he had raised $2.6 million to Duarte’s $3.1 million. On June 30, he had #1.8 million available to Duarte’s $2.1 million. Help Adam Gray close the gap and win the election. DONATE. See Len’s Political Note #586.
California 22 Rudy Salas. In another 2022 inland California close race, Rudy Salas lost to David Valadao by slightly more than 3,000 votes. This district is anchored by Bakersfield at its southern end.
Rudy Salas was Bakersfield’s first Latino city councilman. He grew up in the city, graduated from UCLA, served as a state senator’s district director, and was elected to the State Senate in 2012. He describes his career as focused on bringing results back to his district. Having served during the pandemic, he reminds people, of those results: a $50 million post-pandemic investment directed toward local nursing homes, an emergency response center, a cooling center, funds for Bakersfield College, for clean water.” He adds his successful effort that had ensured that Kern’s county hospital was open.
In July, 2023, having decided he would run again against the incumbent, he announced “David Valadao’s votes for higher prescription drug prices and healthcare costs are an attack on our wallets …. Valadao’s support for criminalizing abortion, including for the victims of rape …. is an attack on our personal freedoms. Central Valley families aren’t going to stand for it anymore.”
The incumbent, David Valadao, is the son of Portuguese immigrants who ran a dairy farm until it failed, defaulting on $9 million in loans. The dairy’s bankruptcy allowed escape from a lawsuit for failing to pay minimum wage or overtime. The Dairy’s spokesperson said the farm’s failure was due to excessive federal regulation.
Rudy Salas can win this election with your help. In September, one poll found the two candidates even, another found Salas ahead by 4 points. In the financial race, Rudy Salas is slightly behind. By June 30, he had raised $3.1 million to Valadao’s $3.4 million. On June 30, he had $1.7 million available to Valadao’s $2 million.
Help Rudy Salas win this election. DONATE. See Len’s Political Note #602.
Iowa 01 Christina Bohannan is another Democrat making a second try. In 2022, she lost to the incumbent by 20,000 votes. In 2020, the incumbent, Marianette Miller-Meeks won by 9 votes. Her opponent had legitimate concerns about votes not counted and the House’s Democratic majority considered seating her instead of Miller-Meeks.
Like Kirsten Engel, Christina Bohannan is a law professor. Like Kirsten Engel, she was from out of state. Iowa is not quite as blasé about out of staters as Arizona. But Christina Bohannan has a story to tell.
Christina Bohannan grew up in a trailer in rural Florida. She explains her support for the availability of health insurance and health care. Her father, a construction worker, developed emphysema, couldn’t work, and lost his health insurance. “People like my dad, who work hard and do their part, should be able to make a living without the fear of everything they worked for being ripped out from under them [by illness].”
Teachers helped her. Through their encouragement, through her willingness to pick oranges to help pay her way through school, she made her way through undergraduate engineering school at the University of Florida. She made it to a law degree at the same university, paying for it from earnings from engineering work. She developed a specialty in intellectual property and got a job at the University of Iowa’s law school.
Involved in academic politics, she was elected President of the faculty Senate. Involved in conventional politics, she was elected as a state rep. In the legislature, she earned a reputation for her tough analyses of constitutional and legislative proposals. As a consequence, she is not popular with the right wing in the Iowa state legislature.
Miller-Meeks has voted against the Affordable Care Act and expressed her opposition to legalizing abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or harm to the mother. In her 2014 race, she opposed same sex marriage and she opposed EPA’s regulation of waterways and coal plants because she thought regulation was problematic for farmers. She has tried to be moderate. She voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act even though the Act had protections for transgendered women. She was one of the 35 Republicans to support the investigation of the January 6 insurrection.
Christina Bohannan can win this time. An October poll shows her leading by 4 points. One in August had found the two candidates even. She is even in the financial race. By June 30, she had raised $3.4 million to Miller-Meeks’ $3.5 million. On June 30, she had $2.4 million to Miller-Meeks’ $2.3.
New Jersey 07. Sue Altman is a less likely winner than the others. A recent poll paid for by her campaign had her behind the incumbent by 2 points. She has proved to be an effective politician.
Sue Altman used to be an effective basketball player. It has happened before that New Jersey elected an outstanding basketball player and Democrat to high office. It could happen again. Sue Altman, like her mother, was an outstanding high school basketball player – Sue in New Jersey, her mother in Long Island City, New York. Her mother was ahead of her time, but Sue was at the beginning of attention being paid to women’s basketball. At Columbia, she was all Ivy League and led that school’s team to its best record in years. In the Irish professional league, she scored a basket at the buzzer to win the semi-finals.
After getting two degrees from Oxford, she returned home to teach and coach – initially at a private school. Subsequently, she brought her skills to Camden, then and now New Jersey’s poorest city. In 2019, the median family income was just over $27,000. Her teaching and coaching skills gradually turned into advocacy and even confrontation in opposition. Angry at Governor Chris Christie’s disdain for public schools, she pointed out the rich curriculum and small classes of the private schools he sent his kids to. She fought new statewide tests and the state takeover of the Camden Schools. She led representatives of 50 organizations to a meeting of the state economic development authority, told them their policies amounted to corporate welfare, and that they should all resign.
With that background, she was a natural to lead the New Jersey Working Families Party. With that background, it is remarkable that she built an alliance with New Jersey’s Democratic governor, got his endorsement for her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Congress, and created a powerful enough impression so that she had no opposition in the Democratic primary.
Can she defeat one term Tom Kean Jr.? Son of a popular Republican New Jersey governor, his approach to seeking reelection to congress has been quiet. He has been so quiet that Sue Altman has accused him of hiding. So have a few newspapers. He has raised money, though. By June 30, Kean had raised $4 million to Altman’s $3 million. On June 30, available for spending, Kean had $3 million to Altman’s $2.2 million.
Help Sue Altman surprise us all. She could win. You might have to DONATE to be sure she wins. See Len’s Political Note #578
Let’s flip as many of these ten seats as possible. Three could get us a majority. Five might get us past a crazily close situation. Eight could get us comfortable. All ten would be a kind of miracle.
Don’t forget the Senate
The most vulnerable Democratic incumbents
Jon Tester, seeking his fourth term representing Montana is probably the most vulnerable Democrat. DONATE
Sherrod Brown, seeking his fourth term representing Ohio is probably the second most vulnerable Democrat. DONATE
The most promising Democratic challengers to flip a Republican seat.
Nebraska Union Leader Dan Osborn could flip Incumbent Debbie Fischer’s seat. Fischer has been nondescript. DONATE to Osborn
Texas Congressman Colin Allred could flip Incumbent Ted Cruz’s seat. Cruz is generally considered the least popular man in the Senate. DONATE TO Allred
Florida former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell could flip Incumbent Rick Scott’s seat. With a net worth in the range of $250 million, Scott demonstrated his disregard for services that ordinary people rely on when he proposed that social security and Medicare be subject to votes of approval every five years. DONATE to Mucarsel-Powell
WE HAVE A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO WIN
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
As we look toward November, we can see that the odds of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz winning the election have become better. You can strengthen those odds. Every donation, large or small, makes a difference. Larger donations mean more money for the campaign. But many in the media count the number of small donations as a measure of enthusiasm for the candidate. Make a small donation if you cannot afford a large one. DONATE TO KAMALA HARRIS AND TIM WALZ.
